Confliction

Investigative journalist Michael Hudson surveys the damage done by World Bank funded projects, from destruction of ecosystems to displacement of indigenous people, and explains why increased competition within international development accelerated the problem and what happens when the organization is confronted with evidence of its own effects on the world.

The Radical Pessimist, Kevan Harris explains why future Middle East problems will be solved regionally and not internationally, then explores the many angles of the US/Iran sanctions story, from the revolution the US thought it could incite in Iran, to the complicated, diverse economy the West will find when it enters the Iranian marketplace.

Historian Andrew Hartman explores the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s as a battleground for ownership of a stake in the American identity, the splintering of the coercive illusion of a white, Christian “normative America,” and explains why values lost value in the neoliberal economic revolution.

Dan Litchfield talks about his frustrations selling Ohio on wind energy, or even talking calmly about wind energy with people against it. He isn’t giving up, but explains that he’s going to spend more time doing something a bit more satisfying – starting up a tiny brewery of his own.

Historian Ian Morris makes the case that as humanity’s potential for violence grows, and government gain a monopoly on destructive force, we are actually safer and more prosperous than at any time in history.

Jeff Dorchen is sequestered in his filmmaking hole, and all he can do is imagine a world where Rick Santorum eases into a serape, Hillary Clinton helps black men move out of Harlem, and zombies reclaim their Afro-Caribbean roots from the cold, be-flanneled hands of white appropriators.